The invention relates generally to systems and method for enhancing movement related data to detect objects such as blood vessels.
Doppler processing techniques are commonly used in medical ultrasound machines for obtaining velocity information from moving objects. The velocity measured using ultrasound Doppler techniques is the radial component of the velocity directed toward or away from the ultrasound transducer. Two common modes are continuous wave (CW) and pulsed wave (PW) Doppler acquisitions. One advantage of the pulsed wave acquisition is the ability to produce velocities estimates at multiple depths along the beam direction locations allowing a two-dimensional image of the velocities to be formed. The pulsed wave data acquisition consists of transmitting a series of ultrasound pulses at a regular rate, referred to as the pulse repetition rate (PRF), in a given direction. For each transmitted pulse, the RF waveform of the returning echoes is collected as a function of time. Real-time processing techniques, such as the autocorrelation method, can be applied to the data from a PW Doppler acquisition to produce an estimate of the velocities. The depth of the object causing the backscattered echoes is found by converting the time in the RF waveforms to a distance along the direction of the ultrasound beam using the speed of sound in the medium. Previous attempts to use ultrasound data to detect blood vessels were insufficient.